PHILOSOPHICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN MAHFOUZ' CAIRO TRILOGY

     Kamal is certainly an autobiographical character, though to exactly what degree is not clear. The most obvious similarity is his age: Mahfouz was born in 1911, and Kamal would have had to be born near then as well for him to be 36 by the end of Sugar Street (232). The details surrounding his childhood are undeniably similar as well: Mahfouz was haunted by an infatuation with one of his neighbors for many years, he experienced disillusionment with religion when he found the tomb of al-Husayn to be empty, and he then began to study Darwinism and declared a philosophy major in college. Also like Kamal, Mahfouz did not marry until late in life. In 1946 he started writing this trilogy, in almost exactly the situation of Kamal at the end of Sugar Street, and his mental state may have been similar too, for he got married the next year.

     One especially significant difference between the two, however, is that Mahfouz' family during childhood was much less patriarchal than Kamal's. Matti Moosa[+] points out that unlike Kamal's mother Amina, Mahfouz' mother "enjoyed relative freedom; she could at least visit the pyramids or the Egyptian Museum apparently without her husband's consent" (150). Mahfouz' penchant for writing about his own life can be seen in this example too, as Moosa also points out in reference to Amina's strict confinement and subservience to her master al Sayyid Ahmad: "Mahfouz may have based this episode on a similar case from real life. Opposite his family's house lived the family of Shaykh Ridwan, a venerable-looking man from Syria. Their door was always closed, and the shaykh never allowed his wife to leave the house, not even to visit neighbors" (150). Another difference between Mahfouz and his character is that the elderly Mahfouz, at least, lacks the notoriously huge head and nose of Kamal.

     A more significant difference between the two, however, is that Mahfouz started writing at 17 and published his first novel in 1939, while Kamal spent more of his young adult life as a schoolteacher/philosopher and did not write a novel. Even in this their similarity may be great, as Mahfouz admitted in a 1989 interview, "I began my literary studies a bit late, after studying philosophy" (Abu Ahmed 61). More than Kamal, the character of Riyad may serve to represent Mahfouz' early literary ideas, especially since his style seems to be similar to Mahfouz' own-- more naturalistic than political. Riyad's writing is in fact criticized by Sawsan as "descriptive analyses of reality but nothing more. They provide no guidance or direction" (Sugar Street[+]⁺ 192). She goes on to say "he limits himself to description and analysis. Compared to real struggle, his work is passive and negative" (SS 193). Riyad's style seems to correspond with Mahfouz' statement about literary theory in another interview: "An artist, to my mind, has to depict . . . reality without distorting it. Without going in for fanaticism or ideological commitment and without speaking out in favour of one belief or another" (Victor 6). Riyad's comments about basing a novel on Kamal, and Kamal's promise at the pyramids to write a novel including Aïda, Budur and Husayn also provide a rather strange self-referentiality and a hint or foreshadowing of autobiography to the trilogy. Finally, Kamal's introspection and intense desire to understand himself at the end of Sugar Street could have been a reason for Mahfouz, if his situation was as similar to Kamal's as it appears, to write an autobiographical novel.

     Kamal fits into the rest of the Cairo Trilogy as more than an autobiographical figure, however. Mahfouz uses him to show the impact of change in Egypt, especially philosophical change, which seems to be the most impacting influence in Mahfouz' own life too. The degree of autobiography in Kamal's life seems to depend much on the element of Egypt he represents-- chiefly Mahfouz' own element, the intellectual one. Mahfouz highlights the political changes in Egypt mainly through Fahmy in Palace Walk and Kamal's nephews in Sugar Street, and he describes the changes in social order mainly through Al-Sayyid Ahmad and Amina. Instead, he takes Kamal's character from his own experience for a representative of the philosophical shifts in Egypt. These movements, while not usually dealt with by anyone except intellectuals, nevertheless have a gradual and profound effect on any society and are part and parcel of its politics and social change. Kamal affords Mahfouz a space to explore the process of philosophical change because seems to be deeply concerned with the philosophical problems his country is newly experiencing, and even his involvement with social and political change seems to be more centered in philosophy.

     Kamal's encounter with European philosophy is wrapped up with the rest of his life. In the beginning of Palace of Desire, Kamal is possessed with love for Aïda, and his faith in Islam is complete and sincere. "Prayer for him was a sacred struggle in which heart, intellect, and spirit all participated. It was the battle of a person who would spare no effort to achieve a clear conscience, even if he had to chastise himself time and again for a minor slip or a thought" (23). His faith at this stage is very similar to his mother's, and it represents the old order of Egyptian philosophy grounded in Islamic theology. This faith is linked closely to the idealism of his profound infatuation with Aïda and his ardent respect for Sa'd Zaghlul, indicating, as much as Kamal represents Mahfouz and Egypt as a whole, the old paradigm of nationalism and untroubled faith in God. Kamal's unusual interest in studying literature and philosophy may also be representative of Egyptian society as a whole as it reacted to the West. Europe was seen as the center of all great art, literature and philosophy, and Arab society, like Kamal, seems to have devoured it ravenously when it has become available.

     We can see Kamal's initial idealism slowly eroded by the expansion of his knowledge and consequent disillusionment about the shrine of al Husayn and the teachings of Islam on creation. But it is the loss of Aïda and the death of Sa'd Zaghlul that affect his beliefs the most, and he becomes more willing to plunge himself into Darwin and other newly discovered philosophers. The similarity between Kamal and Egypt as a whole in this matter is obvious, and we can see how a society with a firm religious base can be opened up to philosophical questioning and disillusionment by internal betrayal as well.

     Kamal's eventual fall from idealism to atheism, hedonism and plaguing doubt likewise provides an indicator of Egypt's philosophical response to the new European philosophies. The respect Egyptians carried for anything European coupled with disillusionment with leaders and traditional ideals made modern European ideas of science, society and metaphysics all the more attractive, and Kamal's despair and resort to hedonism may reflect a realization in Egypt of the bleak implications of its newly embraced philosophies. Also, the widespread corruption following the Wafd's rise to power may have been because of a societal response similar to Kamal's nihilism and anxious refuge in pleasure.

     Kamal's resolution at the end of Sugar Street seems also to be indicative of a change in Mahfouz and the country as a whole. Fed up with doubt, Kamal seems to embrace an existentialist position that believing anything and acting upon it is what is important. The outcome of all this philosophical change is a mixture of Arabic tradition and European philosophy, and it is evident by Mahfouz' later interviews that he has assimilated very European ideas about literature, science, and progress, and even his literary style seems to be influenced by scientific naturalism which seeks objectivity, realism and no answers from God. His tendency in the Cairo Trilogy to emphasize genetic similarities between characters like Yasin and his father, Amina and her father, and Maryam and her mother may also be a result of philosophical engagement with science.

     Though the trilogy is complex and can be read at many different levels, the similarities between Kamal's life and Mahfouz' own are a signal to us that Kamal's problems are important to Mahfouz and have much to communicate about Egypt because of their origin in personal experience. Kamal is an especially valuable character because he offers us a less exaggerated social type than the rest of his family, one who is simultaneously intensely personal to the author and a representative of the whole of Egyptian society. He allows us to see Egypt more clearly by seeing through the eyes of its most notable author.

Abu Ahmed, Hamed. "A Nobelist's Inspiration." World Press Review 36.1 (1989): 61.

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace of Desire. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

-----. Sugar Street. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Massuh, Victor. "Interview with Naguib Mahfouz." UNESCO Courier Dec. 1989: 4-6.

Moosa, Matti. The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz. Gainsville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1994. [+] These quotes are taken from an uncited handout given to me by Richard Sutliff that I believe to be from Moosa's book.

[+]⁺ hereafter SS.